


The Shittiest Road Trip In The Entire Apocalypse

by GreyscaleCourtier



Category: Death Stranding (Video Games)
Genre: Explicit Language, POV Second Person, Platonic Relationships, Spoilers for basically anything post chapter 2, look they're just Bros ok, they both have anxiety but in opposite directions so they balance each other out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21648661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyscaleCourtier/pseuds/GreyscaleCourtier
Summary: just a fun thing about Sam dragging Mama halfway across the country just so she can yell at her sister in person. god they're best friends and i love them so m uhc
Relationships: Sam Porter Bridges & Mama
Comments: 9
Kudos: 97





	The Shittiest Road Trip In The Entire Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> *gently takes hte canon and carefully puts it in the incinerator* **my city now mr kojima**

Sam doesn't argue when you ask him to take you to see Lockne. You appreciate that about him. Sam minds his own business. And if you just so happen to make yourself his business, well, he'll mind you too.

But a few minutes later, you're eyeing the body bag laid out on the floor with probably-obvious trepidation.

"Won't be too long," Sam assures you. "Few hours tops."

You nod, but a body bag is still a body bag.

"It's this or sit under the timefall," Sam says, a moment later.

So you get over yourself and lie in it like the corpse you are. You're silent as Sam zips it up, checks the straps and clips for the hundredth time, and finally hauls you onto the cargo rack with a grunt.

"Couldn't just send a 'gram?" he huffs, taking a moment to find his balance.

"They're not on the chiral network yet, so, no." You're pretty sure he's just bitching for bitching's sake, and anyway, you feel a little entitled to push his buttons a bit today. He did kill your daughter, like, half an hour ago. "Besides, we never get to hang out, you know? You're always busy."

"And you're not?" he points out.

You nod, even though he can't see you. "All right, that's fair."

The two of you fall into an easy rhythm. Well. More like Sam walks, and you hang off his back in a body bag and watch the landscape go by. The ruins of the hospital shrink away into the distance, and with it, the grave of your daughter and your soul.

If you told Sam that leaving would kill you, would really kill you, he probably wouldn't have agreed to take you. You feel kinda guilty about it, but the wonderful thing about death these days is that it's everyone's problem except for the dead guy's. You're halfway there already, anyway.

-

The first day passes in a quiet monotone of footsteps, the whir of the power skeleton, Sam's steady breath rising and falling against your back. Occasionally, his BB coos and burbles in its tank, and Sam talks to it gently. It makes you smile.

"Mrrrble?" says the BB sometime around sundown. "Bah?"

"Yeah, I hear you," Sam says.

Your breasts ache in response. God damn, you miss your baby girl. You can feel the pang of an open wound where her connection to you is suddenly gone. It feels like being back under the hospital, pinned by the rubble, throat screamed raw, your sister's mind suddenly walled off from you for the first time since the womb. Labor pains tearing you apart from the inside.

It's a bad memory to have while you're pinned in a body bag. You can't even wipe the tears that well up and spill down your cheeks, with your arms zipped too close to your body. You shut your eyes and let the breeze dry them in itchy streaks, and you hope Sam doesn't suspect a thing.

If he does, he doesn't say so. You appreciate that about him.

-

The second day is a shitshow.

The cliff face looms up above you, but you don't think anything of it until the steady beat of Sam's footsteps comes to a halt. It stirs you out of the half-doze you managed to fall into some hours back. "What is it?" you ask.

"Ladder's gone." Sam pauses to think and catch his breath. "Fuck," he finally says.

You twist around, wriggling halfway out of the cargo rack, to see what he's talking about. In fact, the cliffside is completely devoid of ladders. "Huh," you say. "Fuck indeed."

It's slow, nerve-wracking progress, but Sam makes good on his promise not to leave you for even a moment, hauling you both up handhold-by-precarious-handhold. You get a good long look at the rocky ground beneath you, but you can feel Sam keeping steady balance, and the fear of falling doesn't strike you as hard as it might have otherwise.

Until the strap over your left elbow shifts in a weird way.

"Sam?"

"Hm?"

"One of these straps just came loose," you start, and then the strap in question snaps.

The bag slips and for a dizzying instant you're in free fall.

Then you come to a sudden jerking stop, every strap still holding you tightening, and you hang for a few seconds as the horizon spins wildly.

"Goddamn," Sam pants from somewhere above you. "Hang on and don't move."

You don't really have anything to hang onto, but you obey and sit as still as a corpse until there's something like solid ground under you. Sam lays the bag down and unzips it. "You okay?"

You nod. You're both huddled on a narrow ledge of rock, some twenty feet up the cliff, with barely enough room for the two of you. "What just happened?" you manage.

"Cheap BRIDGES gear. Had to grab you before you fell." He says it very matter-of-factly, like grabbing a body bag one-handed from the side of a cliff was something he did every day.

You open your mouth to rib him for it when the ledge crumbles beneath him, and Sam falls like a stone.

-

You stay in the bag. There's restless clouds in the distance, and you know better than to let yourself be caught in the timefall. You zip yourself up tight, curl up as close to the cliff as you can wriggle, and wait. You can sort of see him from here, but there's pooling blood that you don't want to see, so you shut your eyes and think about the holopresentation Deadman did about repatriates.

"The process, to the repatriate, can take anywhere between a dozen seconds and a full day." Deadman's tinny voice crackles through her memory. "To an outside observer, it generally takes less than five minutes. The repatriate must awaken in their Beach, find their body, and return to it before necrosis can take place."

So you wait. You count seconds by Mississippis. Not that you know what a Mississippi is. You make it to one hundred Mississippis before you let yourself start to worry, irrationally, because Sam's died a dozen times or more, and he always manages to get back up. What are the odds it'll be permanent this time, of all the others?

The odds don't have time to run themselves in your brain. You're at one hundred and nine Mississippis when there's a sudden gasp from the ground twenty feet down, followed by hacking coughs, pants, and you peer over the edge just in time to see Sam stumble to his hands and knees and vomit a mouthful of tar and cryptobiotes. You've never been so relieved to hear someone puke. Whatever it is that makes the Other Side spit Sam's soul back out, you're glad it doesn't want him.

It takes him another hour to get full motor control back. You've never seen a repatriation before, and you hope you won't have to see it ever again. By the time Sam finally drags the both of you over the lip of the cliff, it's evening and the clouds are heavier and darker than ever. Sam hardly stops to take a breath before setting off for a little cluster of rocks that forms a tiny overhang, perfect for huddling and waiting for the rain to stop.

-

"I would literally rather drink timefall," you say as kindly as you can. _"That_ shit is poison."

Sam shrugs and knocks back the rest of his canteen. "Suit yourself."

"Maybe that's why you can't die," you suggest. "Maybe you're just like, 80% energy drink, 15% cryptobiote, and 5% regular-ass blood."

"Checks out."

You clean your glasses and make a face at him. You're rewarded with a very small, very gentle smile.

-

The fourth day, as Sam winds through the bullrushes on the edge of a river, you're startled out of your daydreams by the sudden whoosh-ping of a sensor pole. It kicks your anxiety right in the teeth, but Sam seems completely unbothered.

"Are we in MULE territory?" you finally work up the nerve to ask.

"Yeah." He doesn't elaborate.

"Oh... kay." You consider that. "Is it... is it faster this way, or...?"

"Once we steal a truck, it will be." You might be imagining it, but there's a hint of renegade mischief in his voice.

"You're a bastard. Let's do it."

The BB warbles happily in its pod.

-

The MULE truck is garbage, rusted-out from timefall exposure and riding on tires rubbed bald on the rocks, but it's a nice change of pace from being wrapped in a body bag and slung over Sam's cargo rack. Definitely leaves you with what little dignity you still have, you think, stretching your cramped arms as you watch the MULE camp vanish into the distance in the rearview mirrors. Sam guns the engine and the truck bounces over a cluster of chiral crystals, splashes through a stream, skids in the mud and then finally soars over a hillock, blocking your view of the camp so it's just you, Sam, and the BB turning somersaults in its tank.

"You'd've made a great car thief," you say. "In other circumstances."

"You're all just lucky I'm not a MULE yet," Sam scoffs.

He drives for hours, even though every incline makes the engine rattle and scream like a banshee, and the timefall they drive through leaves streaks of fresh (or older?) rust along the hood. You offer to drive so he can get some sleep, but Sam snorts and doesn't answer. It's probably for the best. You don't know how to drive. Never learned. Lockne got her distro-transport license years ago, though. Maybe she'll teach you. Or she would, if you weren't going to die. If you weren't already dead. And anyway, Sam's made of tougher stuff than you. It's not like lack of sleep can kill him. You doze off with your forehead against the rattling window.

You dream about your daughter. Her ghostly little form that fit into your hands perfectly, even if you couldn't feel her there. Her little shadows just nestled into the crook of your arms like she knew that's where she belonged. Blank grey wisps where her face ought to have been, thin tendrils of shadow wriggling where she should have had solid pink arms and tiny fingers grasping.

You dream that she's in the wreckage again, waiting for a rescue, drinking timefall to pretend to keep yourself alive. The horrible, horrible cramps of your body telling you it's time, it's time whether you like it or not, and there's no hope for either of you.

You dream about screaming, being drowned out by the thunder and the rattling of the timefall hitting the rubble overhead, dripping down into your open mouth as you scream and scream and scream. You couldn't see the birth - the concrete slab pinning you down kept you from that horror show - but you felt it tearing you apart, and somewhere along the way your daughter stopped moving, and you knew. And then the little gray shadow of the Beached Thing came.

In your dream, it shrieks and wails. It dives for you, suddenly angry, maw open and full of tar. She hates you for killing her.

You wake up with tears on your cheeks. The truck is slowly climbing a hill, the transmission howling in protest, Sam muttering curses as he coaxes the truck forward. You swipe at your face and hope he didn't notice.

"Fuckin' piece of MULE shit," Sam mumbles, hitting the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. "God - fuck it." He slams the truck into park, and, to your confusion, sets a hand on the valve holding the BB in place. "Hold Lou for me. I'll be right back."

"What?" you say, but you're already reaching out to take the pod. The BB gurgles at you and waves its tiny fists. It looks angry.

"Just a second," Sam says, kicking the door open. "Gotta try and get this trash working a little better, or else we're taking the long way around."

The tank flashes red as the BB kicks its little feet, but Sam is already outside. The truck door shuts behind him, leaving you with the BB.

It makes a little noise of fuss. Instinct kicks in and you settle the pod into your arms and start to rock. "Hey, hey, it's okay," you tell it. "He'll be back. He's not gonna leave you. You're just gonna sit with Mama a while, okay?" You coo at the little thing, even smaller than your would-be daughter, and you rock its pod and smile and make funny faces until its sullen little face melts into a toothless grin. It burbles and pats the inside of the tank with its tiny palms, and it hits you that BBs adopt behaviors that they see, and you imagine Sam tapping the glass with a gentle smile often enough for his BB to mimic it, and that's just the cutest thing you've imagined all goddamn week.

The growing wet spot in your shirt is an annoyance, so on a whim, you nestle the pod against your chest, like you used to with your dead daughter's spirit. If it offers either of you some comfort, it can't hurt, can it?

The BB - Lou, Sam had called it, against all advice he's named his BB - Lou settles down quickly. It doesn't try to suckle through the glass, but it seems to know by some primal instinct to curl up in the crook of her arms. Its eyes close, and you notice with relief that the soreness in your breasts is a little lessened. Maybe it's the BB in your hands, or your body, which is finally starting to realize it ought to be dead.

Sam comes back around and climbs up into the driver's seat. "We've got a little juice," he says. "Should be able to get us over the mountain, but after that it'll be fried."

"Literally this country would fucking crumble without you," you tell him, because it's true. You offer the BB back. "Here, she's been fussing for you."

Sam side-eyes you and the peacefully sleeping BB in your hands. "Nah. Keep her for a bit. I gotta focus on driving before we both roll off another fucking cliff. Lou, behave for Mama."

 _Thank you,_ you say in your brain and imagine he can hear it. You cuddle the pod a little tighter.

-

The truck gives out on the downstretch, but Sam keeps it coasting almost all the way down the mountain to keep you out of the timefall for just a little bit longer. Then he zips you back into the body bag, takes the BB and plugs it back into his suit. He freezes for a moment after the valve opens, and you wonder why, but he doesn't offer an explanation and you know better than to ask. He hoists you back up onto the cargo rack and checks every strap twice. God, you appreciate that about him.

In the western sky, chiral clouds are swirling behind an inverted rainbow. "Rain's almost here," you say, because you talk when you're nervous.

Sam apparently decides to ignore your dumbass observations. You appreciate that about him, too. Really, you think everyone loves Sam. The first time Deadman told you about Sam Porter Bridges, you'd wound up telling him to go buy a ring, if he's that infatuated - but you're starting to see what Deadman means when he gets all starry-eyed about Sam.

You're deep in a daydream about officiating a wedding when the sky cracks with thunder and the rain starts to pour. It startles you a little, but it seems to startle Sam more. He freezes in his tracks, and in the cargo rack between you, you can feel his spine go rigid. What did he see? It can't just be that the thunder scared him.

You turn to ask him when it hits you - a wave of dread - a thickness in the atmosphere that says you're not alone - a shivery static in the space between atoms - a psychic punch in the fucking tits, basically. Oh.

"We got company," Sam says so quietly you can hardly hear over the pouring rain.

The BB coos and you hear the odradek slot out of place. If your heart could still beat, it'd be pounding. "Don't forget the cord cutters," you say in a trembling whisper.

Sam shushes you, not unkindly, and sinks into a crouch. You stare at the grassy plain stretching out before you, at the trail of Sam's footprints, and watch the plants sprout, and bloom, and wither, and die, and crumble, and sprout and bloom again. The timefall wreaks such havoc on the world, you think.

A handprint sinks heavily into the mud not five feet from your dangling legs. Over your shoulder, the odradek swings around and chirps a quick and panicked beat. You go very still, very fast, and hold your breath. You're not alive, not really - not properly - but you can't take the risk of alerting the BT.

The handprints slowly make their way around Sam, and once it leaves your field of vision you squeeze your eyes shut.

A clink of cufflinks, then a sudden and violent twist that takes your breath away. The muddy ground swings before your face and it's only through sheer luck that your glasses stay on your nose.

There's a shudder from the BT and a soft sound of effort from Sam, and then it's over.

You open your eyes. The BT is sinking away, back to the other side, and the shadowy part of its form that you can see is dissolving into crystals. Like your daughter did, when Sam cut her free, too.

You keep holding your breath as Sam cuts his way through the field of the beached things. You can't tell if the tears streaming down your face are from your chiral allergy, or the timefall seeping through the body bag, or from thinking about the dead.

Lockne will be so sad, you realize distantly, watching from somewhere far away as Sam carves a path through BT territory with the cufflinks she gave him. Lockne will know, because you can't hide anything from her, and you can feel your body shutting down hour by hour now, and it's only a matter of time before it gives out completely, and, God, won't Sam be just as upset? He'll see it coming, or feel it, because that's what makes Sam so good at what he does. He senses shit. How's he going to react, when he knows the truth? That you were dead the instant you were buried under a collapsed hospital, but your consciousness hasn't given up yet? Fuck. Just...

Fuck.

The rain eases up, and you sink back into your body bit by bit, feeling more than ever like the reanimated corpse you essentially are. By the time you're through with your panic, the timefall is finished, and the clouds are clearing, letting the mildest hint of sunlight through. You let your breath out, finally, even though it comes out in something of a sob.

Sam lets you have your existential crisis in peace. You appreciate that about him.

 _He's never going to forgive you,_ you think, as the clouds give way to the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> this whole thing may or may not have come around solely bc of some incredibly stupid shit i did in this part of the game. take some wild guesses


End file.
